When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era

by Donovan X. Ramsey

Republican strategist Lee Atwater would later summarize the Southern strategy in an interview with Alexander Lamis, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University. “By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you. Backfires,” Atwater said. “So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is, Blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other.”